(Jewish Group) How Tu B'Av, the ancient Jewish holiday of love, was revived

Sometimes, for whatever reason, the best traditions get left behind.

That seems to have been the case with the minor holiday of the Fifteenth of Av, Tu B’av, the midsummer festival described in the Mishna (Ta’anit 4:8) in which “the daughters of Jerusalem go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards,” hoping to find a mate. For over a thousand years, this ritual was forgotten by the Jews as they wandered and settled in countries around the globe.

But for us modern Jews, a Jewish holiday of love involving an outdoor rave is too tempting to ignore, so it’s no wonder that the holiday was revived in the 20th century. Today even the Orthodox community celebrates the one-day holiday of love, which begins this year on Thursday evening, August 11. In one annual initiative, called “Tu B’Av Together: A Global Day of Shidduchim” (shidduchim means matchmaking), Jews around the world — led by rabbis — gather to pray for all Jewish singles to speedily find their match. For a small donation, any single man or woman can add his or her name to the list of unmarried people hoping to find their bashertn, their “destined one”.

The holiday was first observed, according to reports, in the kibbutzim of Mandate Palestine, where vineyards were a thing again: 1925 saw the first such celebration, among a group of kibbutzim in the Jezreel Valley. In today’s Israel, it’s known as “the Jewish Valentine’s Day.”

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